By René González Barrios on April 17, 2020
Photo: Archivo de Granma
On April 19, 1961, on the Cuban sands of Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs), a people’s army, or a people in arms, as we prefer to call it, overwhelmingly defeated the carefully prepared invasion by the United States Government. The victory at Playa Giron has gone down in history as the “first great defeat” of U.S. imperialism in America.
Operation Pluto, prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was the revenge organized by the empire against the powerful forces of the Cuban Revolution. To carry it out, the US employed representatives of the spurious interests of the rotten previous society that had been overcome, members of the CIA and its own armed forces.
The reaction of the Eisenhower Administration to the defeat that January 1, 1959 was not long in coming. The response would inevitably be military, although to do so they would first employ their entire subversive arsenal, preferably the representatives of the old Batista army and the old system.
The traumatic blow of the revolutionary triumph was joined by another forceful one in the political and economic arena. The increasingly radical measures of the Revolution, to make the Moncada Program a reality, directly affected the interests of the monopolies and foreign companies, especially the American ones. The defeat was one thing but the example of Cuba was even more harmful for the empire’s hemispheric domination.
The reaction was immediate. Sabotage, attacks, bombings, encouragement and support of counter-revolutionary gangs, pirate actions, media campaigns demonizing the Revolution and its leaders, diplomatic war, economic blockade and the breaking of relations were only part of the face of the aggression in the making.
In January 1960, the CIA Task Force (TF) WH-4 was created, which developed the Program of Covert Action against the Castro Regime and approved by President Eisenhower on March 17.
The Program, which prepared the conditions to subvert the internal order on the Island, with the use of mercenaries and counterrevolutionaries, was accompanied by the intensification of the combative preparation of elite units of the United States Armed Forces, especially the marines, which substantially increased their exercises and maneuvers in areas of the east coast, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
In the summer of 1960, the CIA asked the Special Group of the National Security Council to approve the flights of U-2 reconnaissance planes over Cuba. The operation was called Kick-Off and was carried out by u-2s from the CIA flying from the Laughlin, Texas, Air Force base. The CIA requested the Special Group to authorize other flights, which took place between 26 and 27 October.
In January 1961, after the abrupt breakdown of diplomatic relations with Cuba, the empire threatened the island, undertaking the Convex-1/61 maneuvers in the Caribbean, with the participation of one aircraft carrier, one atomic submarine, three conventional submarines, ten destroyers and other support units, as well as a thousand marines.
Since February, the destroyer dd-844 Perry, converted into a signal interceptor ship and temporarily based at the naval air station in Key West, Florida, had been monitoring Cuban transmissions, moving throughout our territorial waters.
On March 19 and 20, U-2 Dragon Lady strategic exploration aircraft from Edwards Air Force Base in California, carried out overflights to obtain data on the combat order of Cuban air and ground troops, and geographical data that would allow for the selection of the appropriate place for the mercenary landing.
Subsequently, a detachment of U-2s moved from Edwards Air Force Base in California to Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas and starting on April 6, within the framework of Operation Flip Top, carried out 15 flight missions over Cuba.
As of March 27, the counterrevolutionary station Radio Swan, was carrying out psychological warfare associated with Operation Pluto, by only transmitting information linked to enemy organizations in Cuba. Before, during, and after the invasion, it was the radio source of misinformation. In doing so, it emulated the AP, UPI and AFP news agencies, which were so imaginative and fanciful that, with a total lack of professional ethics and scruples, they reported that the forces had disembarked in the port of Bayamo, announced bloody combats in the streets of Havana and Cienfuegos, the impetuous advance of Russian tanks against the capital, the overflight of Soviet MIGS that had never reached Cuban soil, and massive uprisings in the Sierra Maestra, among other fallacies. Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, the masters of jingoism and propaganda, were children compared to these.
On April 3, the State Department published its first White Paper on Cuba, where it stated: “The current situation in Cuba presents the Western Hemisphere and the inter-American system with a serious and urgent challenge.”
Earlier that month, the Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), to execute Operation Southern Tip, which established a radar surveillance station at sea on vessels to monitor airspace between Cuba and southern Florida. The ships, which were rotating, were located about 100 miles east of Key West, about 80 miles south of Miami and 90 miles off the northern coast of Cuba.
The Invasion Forces Prepared for over a Year
Starting April 13, the command ship Northampton, with the leadership of the second fleet, had been directing from the vicinity of Bimini Island the operations of transfer to Cuba of the mercenary brigade 2506, which had embarked in Nicaragua. Armed and equipped to the teeth, this included the possession of some 35 aircraft, 16 of the B-26 bombers, and was escorted by a powerful American naval group which provided cover when they landed while waiting for the order -which never came- to go into action in support of the self-styled spurious government of the traitor José Miró Cardona, anchored in a Florida military installation.
The American naval detachment assigned for the cover was far superior in firepower to the mercenary brigade. Named the Alpha Task Force, it consisted of the lph-4 Boxer amphibious assault helicopter carrier, with a battalion from the 2nd Marine Division on board; the cvs-9 aircraft carrier, Essex, with 40 combat aircraft: the dd 507 Conway destroyers; dd 756 Murray; dd 701 Eaton, and the USS Independence aircraft carrier, with 70 aircraft on board. It was accompanied by two submarines. They were the same forces and means that for more than a year had been preparing intensely for an imminent war.
On April 16, U.S. naval units carried out maneuvers at sea at night north of Havana and Pinar del Rio, Oriente and Isla de Pinos, with approaches of between ten and six miles from the coast, in order to confuse and delay the Cuban command in identifying the place of landing. On April 17, U.S. Navy naval units carried out a radio-electronic diversionary maneuver from the northern port of Mariel, in Havana, to Bahía Honda, Pinar del Río, in an attempt to divert attention from the direction of the main strike.
The CIA recruited its mercenaries in the United States and prepared them in camps in Guatemala, Puerto Rico and Miami, and in U.S. military facilities such as Fort Bragg and Norfolk in Virginia, Fort Myers and Opa Locka in Florida, Vieques in Puerto Rico, and Fort Guly in Panama. At Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, the U.S. Army trained a counterrevolutionary shock force, which to land directly in the Eastern Province, with the support of the Guantánamo Naval Base, where an unusual force of about 40 combat and security ships were waiting, concentrated there since April 1961. To justify such a presence, the Pentagon announced a military maneuver in the Caribbean area. It was in fact, the war cover for the invasion of Playa Giron.
The US organizers of the invasion sent exploration teams to land to ensure the mercenary landing. Four American pilots belonging to the Alabama National Guard were killed by the fire of our planes and, once the invasion was defeated, in a mixture of arrogance and impotence, fighter planes from the aircraft carrier Essex flew over the fields already free of mercenaries in Playa Girón.
Although the main outcome of the events occurred in the Zapata Marsh in Giron it was not alone. The whole country lived the threat of landing and aggression. On April 15, in the eastern province, very close to Baracoa, the mercenary group of the traitor Nino Díaz was dissuaded from landing upon realizing the presence of revolutionary forces.
Had the beachhead been consolidated by the counter-revolutionary army, and the direct intervention of the U.S. military occurred, the story would have had a much different outcome. Instead, we would certainly be fighting the empire today if we had not defeated it earlier. As our Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz said at the 25th anniversary of the Giron Beach victory.
“…The importance of Giron is not in the magnitude of the battle, of the combatants, of the heroic deeds that took place there; the great historical significance of Giron is not what happened, but what did not happen thanks to Giron.”
Source: Granma, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau